Sessions

ETech's sessions have been carefully selected to represent the most promising and disruptive technologies, and the challenges they present. From pioneering wireless technologies and location-based services to inventive interfaces and social software, ETech detects and magnifies the first ripples in waves of technology that will revolutionize communication, business, and play.

Day At-A-Glance Overviews

Sessions by Track

Interfaces and ServicesAs the devices people spend more time staring at and interacting with -- the laptop, palmtop, and hiptop -- tend more and more toward mobility, the ways we interact with data and services are changing dramatically. We're taking a leap back from the heavy GUIs of past years to lighter-weight, componentized, flexible interfaces. We’re reconsidering the browser interface, and discovering what happens when you turn web pages back into their underlying applications and data.

Social SoftwareWe’re entering the Golden Age of social software, software designed to support the interactions of groups of people. Friendster, Technorati, LinkedIn, and FOAF (friend-of-a-friend networks) are a proving ground for describing and exploring social connections. Location and mobility are being thrown into the mix, making possible silly experiments like Flash Mobs and serious ones, like Howard Dean's use of MeetUp for his presidential campaign.

UntetheredCellular telephone users disperse and gather dynamically as they transmit short notes billions of times a month. Devices on desktops, in pockets, and built into cars loosely couple via Bluetooth into a personal area network. Wireless electricity is moving from the ideas of Tesla to the realities of desktop trickle-charge.

LocationWith people and their arrays of personal gadgets increasingly on the move, being able to locate oneself, others, and local data and services is key. The spread of GPS technology, from handheld receivers to automobiles and cell phones, enables us to fix events and information in space just as easily as we can in time. Suddenly, everyone can be both a producer and consumer of geographic information and location-based services. Yet hidden in this seeming utopia of location-based services lie yet-to-be addressed questions about privacy and security. What does the world look like when it can be seen from anywhere, at any angle?

HardwareMoore's Law drives ease-of-hacks in hardware just as well as it does in software. Hardware hacks expand the machine in new and powerful ways, using cheap, off-the-shelf technology. Hackers previously confining themselves to software are cracking open their devices, poking, prodding, and repurposing. Arrays of sensors and RFID tags are finding and interacting with one another, broadcasting everything from product freshness to chemical safety levels to bridge tolls. What are the future applications and implications of sub-micro computing?

Business ModelsWe feature a range of technologies that are growing just below the horizon of commercial viability, and place a spotlight on projects and people who are likely to become very important to the future of Internet computing. Equally important is a careful study of what the new business models will look like. Will they be a return to the traditional, times being as they are? Or is there room to innovate? Who is putting a stake in the ground and attempting to build the new applications, network, and online culture?